Some things come back to you pretty naturally. TMI?
We got the bikes unloaded from the cargo trailer this morning; emptied out the rest of the riding gear in there and took the motorhome and trailer to our storage place.
Back home, we opened one of the Vine "purchases," an 8'x10' pop-up gazebo...
That gives us plenty of shade over the hot tub, since cleaning it is at the top of today's to-do list. This is the first time since we got this hot tub that I did an empty/fill/sanitize/reprogram procedure. I wasn't sure what to expect, but we did buy a sump pump to make the draining go faster (always used the "gravity method" on previous hot tubs, but we need to push the water over that concrete block wall that surrounds our property (into a conveniently located dry creekbed on the other side of the property).
Based on past experience, I expected it to take 3 to 4 hours to drain and about the same to refill, with whatever cleaning time in between. The whole job today: just under 4 hours. Of course, that is in the blazing desert heat (107º as I was finishing up), so that is like "dog years"... every hour of working out in the heat takes two hours of hydrating and cooling down. Kidding: I plugged straight through it, with a short lunch break while it was draining.
The sump pump did better than I expected, and the refilling (with a special filter) happened in a little over an hour. And testing the water as soon as the tub was full: right on with ph and alk. The owner's manual tells you how to overcome an airlock after refilling, but the guy who set it up last November told me what to do to avoid that and it all worked as hoped. The water temp when I first plugged it in: 92º. Now, you may say, "That's warm," but the hot tub was 107º when I first checked it before emptying... and that was with the heat set at 80º while we were gone. And, yes, 107º is way to warm to comfortably soak. And that is the reason for that white pop-up gazebo.
While I was doing the hot tub stuff, Joan was working on "opening up" her patio: getting the big umbrella set up, getting covers off all the furniture, cleaning what needed to be cleaned (but the covers she ordered did a great job of keeping things clean out there while we were gone.
"So, in another 6 months or so, it might cool down enough for you to use the patio, Jim?" you ask. Well, this morning when we got up, it was 83º out - Joan got Murphy some outdoor time (without a leash) - they were both very happy to get that in.
There is still all the plants, flowers, and yard ornaments that will need to come out and get put in place. Sometime. Just not now.
2 comments:
For now it might be better as as cold plunge, such as you can achieve there. We are in the low/mid 90's for the next week but cool overnight. The whole house fan is helping as we can pre-chill the house to about 63° before buttoning up. The AC has not been coming on until its nighttime program of 70° starting at 9 pm. But at some point the shorter days will take over and we might get back into comfortable temps. I did get to play guitar on the back porch swing last night as it got dark. We go for massages about the time the lawn guys show up this evening. That's the way you do it.... (I want my MTVeeee). Dire Straits reference, claiming 15 points.
Hi Earl - Money for nothin' and yer chicks for free... yep, that's worth at least 15 bonus points. Pretty sure things will cool off here, in like 5 or 6 months. Last year, there were 21 days of 110º or higher; this year is now up to 55 days of that. Coming down from the mountains yesterday, we saw quite a few saguaros that looked burned, but were just completely dried out.
No massage, but there will be a soak this evening (a long shower was nice late this afternoon), with the temp turned down well below the usual 102º.
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